Lewis explained—but it sounded stupid in his own ears—that he and Petra had missed each other somehow and she had never learned that hewasdriving her out to Meadowbrook. She must have taken a train. Please would Dick have her call Lewis at his rooms here the minute she came. It was important. Yes, Lewis would wait in for the call.
After that, there was nothing Lewis could do but wait and try to read, or work on the book. He would read. He wished he had installed an electric fan this summer. It had been the expense, again, that had deterred him. But this was a most oppressive variety of heat. Not a breath. Extraordinary. You didn’t often get nights like this so close to the Atlantic. A good thing he hadn’t let Cynthia hang curtains at his windows. Every particle of air that could come in was here in his curtainless rooms. Lewis took “Phantastes” down from his bookshelves and settled into a chair against one of the windows to read. He had hesitated between “Phantastes” and “Saint Augustine’s Confessions,” and finally chosen the former. His recent talk with Cynthia on the subject of Petra was the deciding factor.
Eight. Half-past eight. Quarter to nine. Dick must have forgotten to tell Petra to call, that was all. They would be just about finishing dinner at the Club now. Lewis would make himself wait until nine, to make certain not to interrupt Dick’s dinner party, and then call.
This time he asked for Miss Farwell herself, but if shewas not there then Mr. Richard Wilder. It was Dick who came, and with promptness. “Yes, just finished dinner. I was right here by the boxes, going to call you. Petra hasn’t showed up. Clare wants to speak to you.”
“Doctor Pryne? Good evening. I’m really rather anxious, you know. What’s become of Petra? Where is she? Dick doesn’t seem to have got it quite straight.”
If Clare knew Teresa Kerr’s whereabouts, Lewis would have asked her for the address then and there, in spite of the taboo Petra had imposed on mentioning Teresa to anybody at Green Doors, for of course it had occurred to him that Petra must have taken McCloud to see Teresa. If she was living in Boston. It was she, Teresa, who had prayed for his cure to Saint Thérèse. It was she who had understood that McCloud could say “I love.” But Clare, Lewis was sure, knew nothing of Teresa Kerr’s present existence. So he merely said, “The whole thing is due to my stupidity. We missed somehow, Petra and I. But I am sure she is all right, that there’s nothing to worry about. Only please ask her to call me the minute she does turn up, will you. I am waiting in to talk with her. Here at my rooms. Thanks so much.”
Lewis had been sincere in his assurances to Clare that Petra was all right and that there was no cause for anxiety on the part of her stepmother. Lewis’ only real anxiety at that time was about McCloud. He wanted to know whether the cure had lasted; and it seemed hard, having merely to sit here and wait for that information until Petra called him up. He grew more certain as theevening wore on that she had taken him to Teresa and that they were there now. The McCloud business had simply put Green Doors and all her social obligations right out of Petra’s mind. You could not wonder at that. Lewis’ own mind had had room for nothing else since, in spite of his pretended reading of many pages, already thrice familiar, of George MacDonald’s “Phantastes.”
He gave up even the pretense of reading now and started pacing his sitting room. It was a large, long, low room, almost bare of furniture. The partitions joining three rooms had been knocked out to make it. The two things Lewis demanded of his living quarters were spaciousness and absence of unessentials. So this sitting room of his—to which he had let Cynthia do nothing—was rather like a very large, beautifully proportioned cell,—except for a grand piano at one end set between corner windows. This was a beautiful rosewood instrument, beautiful in itself as a vase of flowers or a fire on a hearth. And it was heaped with stacks of musical scores. Lewis read music for diversion as other people read books. Sometimes he played to his reading—ghostlily, for his mind alone. But whether his hands gave him back the sounds he read as ghostly echo or not, he usually did his music-reading sitting at the piano as if he were playing. The instrument itself, even when he was not touching the keys, seemed in some inexplicable way to enrich his comprehension of the scores. Bach and Brahms were the masters he consorted with most, but he often turned to César Franck as well, and understood him.
Above the piano between the windows, Lewis had hung a picture, framed in narrow black wood. It was about a foot square, no more, and the only picture in the room. Three trees, done in ordinary pencil. The first impression was of meaning and beauty. The lines of the trees and the grasses at their roots flowed upward with an ineffable sweep of freedom. Even the trunks were fluid. That was the first strong impression. But if one looked again, came nearer, one was surprised at oneself for having seen it as full of meaning because now one guessed that here was but another modernistic performance, seemingly careless, yet (if one was given the grace to understand it) tremendously sophisticated—a production of the very latest moderns. Then if one stayed on there, trying to regain one’s first genuine thrilling response to loveliness, one saw better: now the upward fluid sweep of the trees’ living lines was pure unaffected copying of what some fresh, pure vision had seen. A child! It was a child’s drawing.
It was, indeed, one of little Michael Duffield’s drawings. If Michael kept this way ofseeing(for that was what his drawing was now, pureseeing) through the rapids of adolescence, where so much is torn apart and swept away as well as so much gathered together and added to in the make-up of the psyche, Michael would be one of the masters. A great artist. Lewis was certain of it. Meanwhile, this one drawing was enough for Lewis to possess, of the hundreds Laura Duffield so carefully cherished. When the piano was silent and the musicalscores were put away, it filled the room for him with perpetual music.
Lewis stopped his pacing. What sense was there in all this miserable anxiety, when trees rose up out of the earth, like that, fluid, peace in their flowing boughs! He went to the piano bench—opened Brahms’ Rhapsody in G-minor—smoked and read, read and smoked.
It was after midnight when the telephone rang in the bedroom. He was there almost before the second ring had started, sitting on his bed, lifting the instrument from the table by the pillow. He knew it must be Petra. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Lewis speaking.” Not Doctor Pryne. At midnight, after two hours with Brahms, one’s surname is a thing of peculiar unreality, impossible to speak seriously. Hence his “Lewis speaking.” But there was silence on the wire. For a breath there came no response to his announcement of baptismal selfhood. So he spoke again, with an almost fantastic presumption, into the night at large, “Petra! Are you there.... Petra?”
Out of the dark, out of the invisible, Lewis got his response: “Yes, this is Petra. I hope you hadn’t gone to sleep. They said you wanted me to call you. I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“That’s all right. No, I’m still up. But look here, Petra, of course I want to know about McCloud. What you did with him. How he is.” And then Lewis could not help adding to that, “Petra, have you only just got home?”
Again the brief silence. Because of the hour, the stillness, and all the Brahms in which Lewis was steeped, the stillness on the wire took on the proportions of a cosmic stillness. Or was she only hesitating between fabrication and fabrication—between stories to tell him? If he could only see her face, he would know.
Finally, “Yes, I’ve just come in. Clare waited up for me. I’d forgotten to telephone her, you see; I put it off, and then forgot it. I worried them, I guess. But it was Neil—made me forget. Yes, he is all right. He was starving, Doctor Pryne. Friday, when he came to theoffice, he was starving. He lost his job early in the week. He came Friday to borrow a dollar for food. Teresa and I have been feeding him up. He’s coming around to-morrow to talk with you, at your hotel, at ten o’clock.... Is that all right?”
She had paused before the question,—afraid, apparently, that she might a second time have made a mistake. Lewis was appalled.
“But Petra! Starving! This is a bad business. Where is he now? Do you mean he hasn’t money to buy meals with? What about his breakfast to-morrow morning?”
“Oh, I loaned him some money, all he would take. He’s gone back to his room. He thinks they’ll trust him for the rent until he gets a job. He’s perfectly sure he’ll get a job, now, you see,—now that he’s all right, you know. He’s terribly confident. He’s going to try to sell cars again. He says he has a knack for that....”
“You say you and Teresa fed him.—Teresa—” Lewis stopped. But surely now the barrier was broken down! Teresa was no longer to remain a mystery. For after all, Lewis and Petra and McCloud and Teresa were now linked together by the twist fate had taken this day. But Petra did not catch the implications of his tone and his hesitation. She offered no further details of the evening’s doings. Where they had fed the starving man, what they had fed him, and Teresa’s part in it all, were not forthcoming. “Is it all right about to-morrow at ten? That Neil should come to see you then?”
“Of course. I wish he had come to breakfast, though.I wish you had waited till I came back, this afternoon. Why didn’t you, Petra?”
“That’s what Teresa said, that we should have waited. But when I found that Neil washungry—everything else went out of my mind. I’m sorry.”
“My dear! You have nothing to be sorry about. You’d better be rather satisfied with your day’s work, I should say! I hope your family understand that your not turning up for the birthday party was—was not your fault in any way.”
Petra lowered her voice to answer that. It was almost a whisper. Lewis suspected then that she was afraid that her end of this midnight conversation might be overheard. Clare had waited up for her. “I couldn’t really explain anything much about it, Doctor Pryne. You see—he—Neil—doesn’t want any one to know about—about what’s been happening to him. He cares a lot that nobody should know. So I just said it was work for you—my job—that kept me away, and that it had to be confidential. But Clare’s upset—a little.”
“I’m sorry.... I’ll write your father a note tomorrow morning, Petra. I’d better. He will make your stepmother understand. But I’m sorry it was unpleasant when you got home....”
“Oh, I don’t mind that. Clare wasn’t cross. Only hurt, you know. But the evening—well, the evening has been—lovely. We’ve had a wonderful time!”
“We’ve had a wonderful time!” The words and the lilt in them echoed over and over in Lewis’ head, forbiddingsleep. He told himself it was the oppressive heat of the night which held him awake, his eyes open on the dark. At least, he told himself that in the beginning. After an hour or more of restless tossing, however, Lewis admitted the truth. It was Petra’s happy, excited voice saying “We’ve had a wonderful time” that was making the very idea of sleep fantastic. The words and the new tone in which she uttered them opened vistas to Lewis’ imagination. It was absolutely inevitable in the light of to-day’s happenings that McCloud should—worshipPetra. How could he fail to! Only an imbecile, given the situation, could help it. McCloud, of course, was no imbecile. And Petra—how would she respond to the fellow’s idolization! Now that Lewis was at last face to face with the prophetic misery which was keeping him wakeful, he went on with it—followed the train of thought which he had, in his attempted self-deception, dammed up, while he tossed and blamed the stuffiness of the night.... McCloud was a gorgeous person. Gorgeous was a cheap adjective ordinarily, but in this one instance, it was the right adjective. McCloud—let Lewis face it, see it—was a gorgeous creature, not only physically, to look at, but in inward ways as well. Directness, simplicity and courage. Those qualities make for gorgeousness in a man. How could Petra, after to-night, fail to see McCloud as godlike? Why, her very share in bringing him back to life—for wasn’t that practically what she had done?—would add to her sensibility of his splendor.
“Oh, I don’t mind. The evening—well, the evening has been—lovely.” Lewis laughed audibly. Why should she mind! Why had he ever thought she might, and been concerned about it? How should a stepmother’s annoyance tarnish such a meeting and recognition as had come into Petra’s life to-day! The very tone in which she used McCloud’s Christian name showed how things had gone between them.... Neil and Petra.... “My God!” said Lewis into the dark. “Neil and Petra! Was it foreordained?” He felt a powerful impulse to communicate further with Him of whom he had so spontaneously asked the bitter question. He turned over and buried his face in his crossed arms. But he did not know how to go on with the Contact—did not know how to pray. Lewis had been born into the tradition that formal prayers which one has by heart have no functioning quality. One must make up one’s own prayers, for originality is the only guarantee of His creatures’ sincerity the Omniscient will recognize. But Lewis doubted this proud notion now, as he lay here, facing down into the dark, helpless with the anguish of loss. If only there were patterns: sweet, fluent channels of accustomed prayer, through which one could pour one’s blind groping toward fortitude and peace! What was it McCloud had said to God in Lewis’ office this afternoon? That was prayer, certainly,—even though not uniquely and strikingly the boy’s individual invention. “God have mercy on me a sinner.” Yes, that would do. “God have mercy on me a sinner.” Lewis uttered the ancient unoriginalcry-of-all-souls with stark sincerity to God imminent, God transcendent, and added to it, after a long sweet stillness, “It is Your justice. Why did I think Petra was for such as me? Your justice is Your mercy, Lord.”
In the morning Lewis seemed to remember that peace had flowed into the channel his prayer had cut through his dark with a rushing benediction in a sound as of many waters. Peace. Then sleep.
In the weeks that followed, Cynthia Allen gradually came to admit to herself that she had had all her worry for nothing about Lewis’ untoward infatuation for an uninteresting young girl; for the affair—if one could give anything so fleetingly ephemeral such a title—had blown over. She had been silly even to imagine it serious. A person like Lewis, so subtle, so perceptive, could not long be held in thrall to mere physical attraction and youth, with nothing to give it depth. No, Harry had not succeeded in convincing Cynthia of the ineptitude of qualifying passion with “mere.” Harry was a simple soul, really, in everything except finance. You could not expect him to understand a man like Cynthia’s famous brother. Lewis was all intellectual subtlety. First of all, in any contact, he would look for understanding and depth. Passion, when it appeared, would be a by-product of the discovery of his ideal. He was like Anodos in “Phantastes” in that. Cynthia was sure of it. He was not common clay!
For weeks now Lewis had not come out to Meadowbrook. That was hard on the children and on Harry. They were so devoted to him. But Cynthia herself was not the loser. She frequently met him in town for lunch, where she had him much more to herself than she possibly could in the midst of the family. And it was fun gossiping with him, her interesting brother, in undomestic freedom, giving him innumerable anecdotes of the children, telling him what Harry thought of the financial situation between the countries, and in our own country, and of what she herself thought of the latest selections of the book clubs. Cynthia subscribed to all the American book clubs and had recently added an English one to the list.... And sometimes, always in fact, she slipped in gossip of Green Doors; for Green Doors and its inmates fascinated Cynthia increasingly. The life there—the people who came and went—the parties, the talk—all of it was just a degree above anything Cynthia had ever experienced before of sophistication and a “newer, larger liberty of thought and feeling.” The air was electric. She remarked on it often.
Why, even Petra now interested her, rather, and had taken her place as part of the general fascination of all that made Clare’s life so dramatic. For Petra was having a romance; and all the world loves a lover—at least when no relations are involved. It was that attractive young Irishman, Neil McCloud. Petra had picked him up somehow, all on her own, without anybody’s help, it seemed. Cynthia’s curiosity as to the precise how of thathad never been satisfied, exactly. But he was forever at Green Doors these days—followed Petra around like a faithful dog—literally. If they weren’t engaged, it was obvious they were the next thing to it. Perhaps they were engaged and were refraining from mentioning it until Edyth Dayton McCloud should return from Switzerland with a divorce in her pocket. Cynthia often imagined to herself—and with some enjoyment—how the snobbish Daytons were going to feel when they woke to the fact that the husband whom Edyth had so casually jilted was marrying Lowell and Clare Farwell’s extraordinarily beautiful daughter. Cynthia imagined that the wedding, when it came, would be at Green Doors, outside, on the terrace or lawn; for Clare had no use for stuffy churches and organized religion, although she was more religious, Cynthia was sure of it, than most so-called pious people. Clare lived her religion without any pretense. She would plan a beautiful wedding. It was pretty wonderful of her, too, to take Neil McCloud in as she had done, without apparent question or hesitation. Petra liked him. Petra admired him. That was enough for Petra’s stepmother. She was ready to like and admire him also. But it was only good luck and no special credit to Petra’s discrimination, Cynthia felt, that nobody could help liking the man. He was a perfect darling.
To-day Lewis himself had taken the trouble to call Cynthia up and ask her to dine with him. And he was being very generous and extravagant, for him; he had brought her to the New World Hotel, the best diningroom in the city. It was almost the middle of August, the end of a summer that had been the warmest in Boston’s weather record. Lewis was beginning to show, Cynthia saw, what the strain of the vacationless summer in the city had been. There was a perpetual white line around his mouth, two dark hollows in his forehead, and he was certainly thinner. But—bless him—he appeared to be as interested in herself and her chatter as ever, and as alive to all her interests. About himself and his work he had nothing to say except to tell her, when she asked about it, that his new book was all but finished. The last set of proofs, in fact, would go to the publisher within a few days.
“That’s grand,” Cynthia congratulated him. “All’s well then and the goose hangs high?”
“Oh, yes,” he laughed. “The goose hangs high. They’ve already started arranging in Vienna for the translation. I’ve let Mendel have it. I’ve quite a nice letter from him about it. Came to-day. If he comes over this fall, and he must, I think, may I bring him to Meadowbrook? I should like him to meet you.”
Cynthia was thrilled, naturally. Between her famous brother and Green Doors, her life held all sorts of potentialities these days. It was fun having interests outside and a little beyond mere “Society,” with all its futilities!
“Somebody told me Mr. Malcolm Dayton has come to you for treatment,” Cynthia said, suddenly remembering it. “Clare told me, I think. Not Petra. She’s assecretive with me about office affairs as if I weren’t your sister. Is it true?”
“No,” Lewis answered. He was always a little short when she questioned him about his patients. Cynthia never got used to it nor quite understood it. “Where’d Mrs. Farwell get such a notion?”
“She was waiting for Petra. In the reception office. She said he came in while she was there. She was interested, of course, on account of Neil. Very much interested, as you may imagine!”
“Oh? But yes, I remember. He wanted to see me about a personal matter. It was a damned interruption in office hours.”
“Was it about Neil?” Cynthia was curious almost beyond bounds. And it would be gratifying to have some really interesting news to take to Clare. “Has old Dayton tumbled to the situation? Does he know Neil’s fallen on his feet—in the inner circle at Green Doors?”
“No. At least, I don’t know anything about what he knows or doesn’t know about his son-in-law. Certainly he didn’t mention McCloud to me. He wouldn’t. It’s to be hoped he doesn’t even know McCloud came to me for treatment. It’s Dick Wilder’s fault that anybody knows it. He saw him here one day and then meeting him at Green Doors he remembered. That’s how you know, my dear Cynthia, and the Green Doors crowd. Petra never told. No, Dayton wanted my ideas on something in connection with a new charity he is starting. That, too, was confidential.”
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to be prying, darling. But I hope he doesn’t know about Neil and Petra. He might get dog-in-the-mangerish feelings and stop the divorce going through. I’m not often so hateful, but I rather hope that Edyth is going to see what a fool she has been, too late. Why, from her, you’d think Neil was the veriest bounder. Clare says so, anyway. Edyth had filled Clare up with stories. Now Clare doesn’t believe a word of any of it. She never happened to see Neil, or she wouldn’t have believed them before, she says. But how she detests Edyth! Now more than ever—although she has always seen through her more or less. I always liked Edyth myself; though now, of course, I can see what Clare means about her! It’s nice Neil makes money so easily, isn’t it, in these times! He sold Harry a car last week—on the very day when Harry said we simply had to begin economizing. A joke on Harry! We have no more need of a third car than—than you have, Lewis! But after Neil had talked a few minutes, Harry thought life wouldn’t be life without it! He’s a super-salesman,—must be. Clare is wonderful about the whole thing. She says they’re bound to be happy if Petra goes into it open-eyed. Petra must realize, though, Clare says, that Neil is the type always to have affairs. Nobody so stunning-looking, so amusing and good-natured, can help it. But also he is the type—if Petra’ll only be a little understanding—who’ll be reverential to his wife and simply adore his children. All Petra will need to manage him will be a little adroitness. That’s Clare’s onlyworry about it—that Petra won’t know how to manage him. Why even now—before he’s got Petra safely for his, he flirts with Clare herself—absurdly—under Lowell’s very nose. With me too. But nicely, you know. I’m rather thrilled and I love seeing Harry glower! Petra’s a lucky girl.”
Lewis had decided that he wouldn’t have dessert, after all. Only black coffee. He’d begin drinking it while Cynthia had her ice, if she didn’t mind. He’d have a second cup with her when she came to it. He had some work he had to do to-night later. Lots of coffee was necessary. He had brought some English Ovals along for Cynthia. Yes, truly. Would she have one now—or wait?
“He’s a type who’ll be reverential to his wife and simply adore his children.” Petra the wife, Petra’s the children. Why, now, after weeks of mental self-discipline and grim philosophizing—and nightly prayer—did such a remark have the power to rock Lewis’ very being in agony?
Cynthia was eating what she considered a particularly delectable ice. Too bad Lewis didn’t want his. “But there’s one thing may spoil the whole show,” she went on. Her chatter to-night was tireless! “It looks almost as if Dick himself is getting serious about Petra. Remember your asking me why he didn’t, weeks ago? And I said, how could he? Well, he seems to be like most men—let another male admire a woman and they begin to think there may be something in her. Men act like sheep intheir erotic adventures. I don’t know whether Clare has noticed it. But if she has, she probably isn’t bothering. Dick needs some one quite different from Petra—a younger Clare. He is so utterly a product of super-civilization. While Petra and Neil—there’s something untamed, unaccountable, about both of them. With Neil it’s his Celtic blood, I s’pose. I shouldn’t wonder if Petra’s mother was Irish. Those blue eyes! Are you interested in all this chatter? Lewis,I’m boring you!”
“No, Cynthia. I’m not bored. Only it’s all so futile. I didn’t know you and your friend Clare had those two already married. Haven’t either of you remembered that Neil is a Catholic? His marriage to Edyth Dayton was confirmed by a priest. No matter how legal a divorce she gets, so far as McCloud is concerned, he is married to Edyth as long as they both live.”
“Oh!—But if Edyth can be free, why can’t Neil? He never mentions anything religious. I don’t believe he gives it a thought!”
“Perhaps not. I don’t know anything about that. But if your surmise is true, it is only temporary. In his heart McCloud would feel that any marriage he contracted now was no marriage. Whatever his plunge into Clare’s circle has done to him, it won’t—in the last analysis—change his Catholic heart. At least, I don’t see how it can.”
“But Lewis! Surely—surely you aren’t so—why, I don’t understand! You wouldn’t have a man like that gounmarried! He’s just the sort to go to the devil—ifhe hasn’t ties. Of course he will marry again. If not Petra, some one else. He’s bound to.”
Lewis had good hold of himself now. He said, “No one is bound to be disloyal to the truest thing in him. Any more than he’s bound to be loyal to it. We’re creatures of free will. But if McCloud does use his free will toward the destruction of his new-found integrated self, I hope that it won’t be Petra who is the instrument. I’m very fond of Petra, as it happens,—deeply fond of her; and to see her ruin any man’s life—I simply can’t, that’s all. No matter what tragedy this means for them both, I hope they don’t go so far as a marriage pretense. Now I’ve told you my ideas on the subject, let’s forget it. It’s really their affair, not ours. But somehow I’m putting my faith on McCloud’s integration saving them both from inevitable misery. Petra’s doing awfully well at the office, by the way. Losing her would be no joke!” ... He ended on something which Cynthia, taking it at its face value, considered a laugh.
But though she let the sound pass as a laugh, Cynthia looked at her brother rather keenly. Had she been wrong? Was he still attracted by Petra himself? She shrugged it off. No, she was not wrong. Mere physical attraction wasn’t going to twist Lewis’ fine, important career out of shape, wasn’t going even to worry him for a minute. She was happily sure of it.
It was true, what Lewis had just said of Petra’s work. She had made herself invaluable in these long, hot, trying weeks, both to him and Miss Frazier. She could takedictation now, if given a trifle slowly, and when Lewis and Miss Frazier were both working under pressure, they sometimes even left letters unread for Petra to sign. And in the reception office people trusted her and liked her. They liked her even to the point, it seemed, of not minding being put off by her. This was a blessing in itself, since putting off people was one of the chief functions of her job. Just her voice over the telephone seemed to have the power to salve wounded feelings and instil resignation in importunate patients.
Lewis had taken her out to lunch several times during the summer, getting in his bid ahead of Neil or Dick. But those intimate hours afforded no reprieve from his loneliness for the real Petra. Those hours tête-à-tête over little tables turned Petra and Lewis into strangers. Although Lewis never accepted Clare’s eager invitations to parties and intimate teas at Green Doors, and met Clare only by accident at times when she came up to the office ostensibly to see Petra, Petra still considered him Clare’s friend, not hers. She clung almost passionately to that assumption. Lewis knew no way of breaking it down. Her stubbornness in this one matter was equalled only by her reticence. And since their midnight telephone conversation, she had never spontaneously brought Teresa into the conversation once. To his own tentative and diffident suggestions, she had always the same answer, “If she asks me, I will take you to see her some day. But not just now. She is—very busy.”
So paradoxically their casual contacts in the office werebetter, more satisfying, than any planned tête-à-têtes. When he stopped by her desk, going out to lunch or coming back, Petra might tell him of some comical incident that had come up during the morning in her gracious sphere, the reception room, and they would chortle over it in good fellowship. But sometimes she seized the opportunity to plead somebody’s case with him. To-day she had done that. Wouldn’t he please give Mrs. Jack Loring more attention? It was so special, so pitiful,—the thing she wanted his help with. Wouldn’t Lewis at least talk with Mrs. Loring about it? Lewis had not minded taking the time to explain to Petra—standing by her desk, looking down into her lifted, serious eyes,—that this particular committee worker was hysterical, and hopelessly sentimental, as well as outrageously interfering. Children were better off—he expounded it at some length, just to stay there near Petra—better off in degraded homes than in public institutions. But he would promise to do something in his own way, leaving the meddlesome social worker out of it, if he found that anything could be done without violating ordinary human rights to privacy.... It was at such moments as this that Petra was herself with Lewis and that something real was regained—and retained for as many precious minutes as it lasted—of their first intimacy on the edge of the June meadow.
But suddenly Petra had looked past him, in their whispered colloquy this afternoon, and smiled. McCloud had come in and was waiting until “the boss” shouldleave off and Petra be free for him to take for a noon spin in the glittering, swanky, sports roadster which, as a salesman, he had at his disposal. Looking from one to another of them in that minute, Lewis had been impressed more profoundly than ever with how alike they were. The eyes were the identical shade of blue. Such a terribly intense blue! They might be brother and sister. Or first cousins. But it was always startling,—as freshly and poignantly startling, every time he saw them together, as if he had never before noticed it. And they were both so vibrantly young! Tall, long-limbed, wide-shouldered, strong-chinned—and then again that intense blue of their eyes! They might be Siegmund and Sieglinde in love, and above the incest-taboos of mere mortals, belonging to each other by their very resemblance....
“Lewis, you look ghastly!” Cynthia broke into her brother’s swift lapse into revery, shattering it with her concern for him. He was grateful. It was not very easy, seeing Petra give to Neil what she had once seemed to give to himself—and then withdrawn—with such adamant mysteriousness.
“You do. Simply ghastly! You’ve put off your vacation too long this year. When are you taking it?”
“Well, that’s why I got you in to-night, to tell you. I’m taking a little one right away. Going off to-morrow. With Dick. Down to Mount Desert. We’re starting early in the morning. I’m driving. We’ll be there several days. Sailing. Climbing. Dick’s in some sort of difficulty. Somethinghe wants to talk over, anyway. And it’s a good time to go. I can take the proofs with me.”
“Oh, need you? Don’t. It’s too silly, on a vacation! But then it’s too silly to call it a vacation, anyway—a few days! Yes—I’ve seen myself Dick’s worried. But why doesn’t he confide in Harry or me—or Clare? Why does he think he can spill it all out on you—you of all people—who have altogether too much of this talking-it-all-out-stuff in your daily grind! It’s pretty inconsiderate of him, I think. Clare’s wise, capable of complete detachment, and besides all that, utterly devoted to the creature. I suppose it is sympathy he wants. Or perhaps—I wonder—is he all snarled up over Petra? If he is—Clare’s certainly the person to hash that over with!”
Lewis said, “No, I don’t believe Dick has anything on his mind that has to do with Petra. Why do you put that idea into my head, Cynthia? If I had thought it was that—but it isn’t—I’d have gone alone. Cynthia, you are the world’s prize idiot. Do lay off prying and finish your coffee. It must be stone cold. How does Harry abide you! If you start crowing here, they’ll put you in jail as a disturber of the peace. No, you can’t have another cigarette. If I’m going in the morning, I’ve got to get back to work now. It’s fun getting you furious in a position where you have to consider your dignity. You’re really quite sweet, all bottled up like that, but foaming around the cork. Come along, sweetheart. Let’s get going.”
People turned to look at them as they left. Their conversation had been far too animated for husband andwife. No, it was romance, it must be. But how distinguished they were! It was always interesting, dining at the New World! You might catch a glimpse of anybody there. It was cosmopolitan and very chic for Boston.
Lewis had anticipated three or four days of sailing among the islands about Mount Desert to the tune of blue sea, blue sky, white clouds, whitecaps, and the salt wind over all. But an unprophesied nor’easter did its best to ruin the holiday. The sky was clear when they started from Boston in Lewis’ car (Dick had been unselfish in letting it be Lewis’ car rather than his own) and it stayed clear until they were within sight of the island. Then suddenly the wind changed and every aspect told them that they were in for a likely three days of drifting fog.
“It will have to be golf and walking, I’m afraid,” Dick apologized for his island. “This is rotten luck. And we’ll have to use all the tact we can muster in dealing with the Langleys. They will be humiliated beyond words!”
The Langleys were the married couple, Yankees and native to Mount Desert, who lived on the Wilder estate in Northeast Harbor and were in charge of the place the year around. The elder Wilders for years past had spent most of their time in Europe, returning for a few weekseach winter to their Brookline home, but coming down to their Mount Desert estate almost never. It had tacitly become Dick’s responsibility and playground. Each summer he entertained several house parties here, and often came alone with some friend, as he was doing now, for a few days of sailing and climbing. If at his appearance the weather was not “typical” the Langleys felt it a flaw in their hospitality; and his days here with Lewis, Dick feared now, would be rife with the good couple’s reiterated apologies for the weather—and all the more insistently because the guest of this particular visit was so important a personage.
“Tell ’em you’d rather walk than sail!” Dick pleaded. “Tell them you know the views so well that it is just as if they were there for you behind the fog! Tell them that fog’s darned restful and just what you need. You see, they are really well-informed people, and you can bet they know all about who you are. You’ll have to work hard, right at the beginning, to put them at their ease, or they’ll be so chagrined they’ll follow us around apologizing all the time. They will be like parents who keep saying when the rector calls that their children never acted up like this before and they simply can’t understand it. You’d think they had created Mount Desert and lived only to display it to me and my guests.”
“I understand.” Lewis laughed. “I’ve noticed that most Mount Desert folk are like that, other years. The first time I came down here, do you know, I couldn’t see any farther than my hand could reach, practically, fortwo solid weeks. That was in August too. I wouldn’t have known there were any mountains if they hadn’t told me. But you can imaginehowthey told me! We were just puffing away in the oldMorse, when the wind changed and it all came out diamond clear. It was like the never-never land. I thought then that it was the finest scenery in the world. Norway itself can’t beat it. I’ll tell the Langleys that. I’ll tell them how I know it by heart. We’ll see, between us, that they don’t suffer beyond endurance!”
So they drove in at the wide stone entrance gates, laughing.
It was pretty disappointing, all the same. The sky, the sea, the mountains were all there, like the next page in a book—but a page that has annoyingly stuck. Dick took it harder than Lewis, however. He had counted on the sharp clear outlines of this Mount Desert environment to make self-expression easy. He had got Lewis down here, really, for the sole purpose of clearing his own mental and emotional decks of clutter. And the fog, somehow, seemed now an externalization of that inward confusion. Having it here, visibly and sensibly pressing in around him, turned him inarticulate. It was Clare who had planned this expedition, really. She it was who had suggested that Dick “clear his emotional decks by talking things all out with Doctor Pryne.” But it wasn’t going to be so easy.—Besides, Lewis wasn’t acting like himself, Dick thought. You couldn’t call him morose exactly, but neither was he particularly exuding sympathy.He was abstracted: as if he had his own thoughts—even possibly his own worries.
At breakfast the next morning they decided against golf. Lewis wanted exercise, he said, and how about climbing a few mountains? Even without the view, he felt like climbing—strenuously. So Dick, putting aside his own silent preference for a morning of golf, started off as cheerfully as he could manage on a foggy all-day walking and climbing jaunt with this somehow new and strange Lewis. The plan was that they should begin gradually—Asticou Hill, Cedar-Swamp Mountain, and then with second wind acquired, traverse the mile-long ledge to Sargent’s top, swim in the pond below Jordan, and descend the bluffs to Jordan Pond, and a taxi home in time for dinner.
They left Lewis’ car at the foot of Asticou Hill, and started up, thick bars of chocolate in their pockets and thick Alpine sticks in their hands. Lewis was ahead on the faint thread of trail, straining his eyes for the cairns which marked the way. Gray gnomes, these cairns seemed to him, each as it pierced the fog, toppling forward or sidewise, beckoning him back from the pathlessness of foot-high forests of blueberry scrub to the faint footworn windings of the climb.
“I planned a house one summer to stand right here,” Dick said, when they came to a giant gray boulder and automatically halted, leaning their backs against its inviting side, looking down into the sea of fog that shut them onto the hill. “It was my first completely visualizedhouse, really. I was twelve, about. I saw the house as a sort of a growth out of the hill. The skies came down, the sea came up, and the doorsill was solid sunlight. Sometimes I really can’t believe it isn’t here, it was so real to me then. But I went farther than architecture in that first venture. I peopled that house, created a family to live in it. You needn’t believe me, Lewis. I don’t expect you will. But the mother of that family was quite extraordinarily like Clare Farwell. Looked like her, I mean. When I first saw Clare, years after, I recognized her as the woman of my early imagination—the mother in that first house of mine. By the way, we are standing by one of the windows in the bedroom I gave her. The bedrooms were on the ground floor, you see. The whole top story was living room—one huge, spacious apartment, practically all windows. But wasn’t it—eerie—about Clare! Imagining her like that when I was just a kid! I’d never seen anybody like her then. Of course, I couldn’t have. There isn’t anybody like her.... Is there?”
“No, I suppose not,” but Lewis’ response had an absent-minded tonelessness. Yet in another minute he asked, his psychological interests stirring, “What were you yourself in that picture, Dick? Or weren’t you in it?”
“I was the middle son of a large family. I remember you that summer, Lewis. You were down here at Doctor Montague’s with Cynthia. She and Harry got themselves engaged at Jordan Pond. The second time they’d seen each other! I remember my tutor saying to somebodyor other that it was a whirlwind affair and he wondered how it would turn out. The word ‘whirlwind’ was what made the grown-up gossip exciting to me and why I remember it now. An exciting word! But speaking of Clare, don’t you think it is rather thrilling the way she has managed to express herself in Green Doors? The firm would be surprised if they knew how little, really, I put myself into it. But that’s good architecting, as I see it. Something like portraiture. If you see what I mean.”
Lewis’ mind was busy with a picture of Dick, a neglected only child, spending long summers on Mount Desert with servants and callow young college-boy tutors while his mother globe-trotted and his father made money,—a child stealing off up here to this lonely, wild hill to plan the ideal house and people it with a mother of his dreaming and a large family of which he was the middle member. “Do you see what I mean? About Green Doors? That it’s portraiture? Portraiture of Clare? And that’s why it’s so perfectly what it should be?”—Would Lewis please come out of his abstraction and pay attention. That’s what Dick’s tone said.
Lewis obeyed and answered. “But is that quite fair? Most houses have more than one person living in ’em. Green Doors has. If you’re going to do portraiture in your architecting, I should think it would have to be composite portraiture.”
“Possibly, with some houses. But not Green Doors. It’s Clare who colors everything there, and a lucky thingfor the others! Have you ever known such—such simplicity and uttergoodness? Isn’t she wonderful! Aren’t you grateful that I have brought you together? Isn’t just knowing her worth all the trouble you’ve taken with Petra? I bet it is.”
“What do you mean, trouble with Petra? It’s Miss Frazier who had to take trouble with Petra just at first, perhaps. But now she’s invaluable to us both, let me tell you. She has a positive flair for the work.”
“Really! I didn’t realize that. Have you told Clare? She thinks it’s really a kind of charity on your part, keeping Petra occupied. Petra herself says you are patience itself and that she is always doing something wrong.”
“That’s nonsense. Or else a form of perverted modesty. Miss Frazier and I would be lost without her now.”
Dick would repeat this to Petra’s stepmother, Lewis hoped. It was something at last, though almost infinitesimal, of course, that he could do for Petra, who asked and wanted nothing of him really.
Then Dick fell mercifully silent, occupying himself by scrawling letters in the sand at the base of the rock. Lewis began counting the fir-tree tops which pricked the fog with their pointed spires at irregular intervals down the hill; for Lewis had acquired a habit, when Petra was called to mind suddenly, as she had been just now, or came without being called, as she did all too often, God knew, of concentrating on the first other thing that came to hand. Now he counted tree tops. And though he wassmoking far too much—he knew—but to whom could it matter!—he took out his cigarette case.
“Clare wanted me to talk to you down here,” Dick said suddenly. “Tell you things. But I rather suspect you know them already. You do, don’t you?”
“What she means to you?” Lewis asked. He was sorry Dick had decided to plunge into intimate confidences exactly at this point. If he would only wait till the fog lifted—till the seascape was diamond clear. If a northwester would only blow! If the weather shifted, Lewis might be able to listen patiently (which was all Dick wanted, of course) to his “If-you-know-what-I-means,” and “Do-you-sees.” But he was in for it now. Dick had Lewis cornered just as, in his utter overworked weariness, he felt the fog had him cornered.
“Yes, what Clare means to me and what I mean to her,” Dick was saying. “I imagine you saw how I felt about her almost before I saw myself. That day when I came to your office! And all during the summer it has gone on getting—well, more and more so. But it isn’t Clare’s fault. She saw things as they were even before I did and she warned me. She wanted me to go away, for my own good. She was sane and beautiful about it. Why, she talked in as detached and clear a way as you could have talked yourself, Lewis. And all the time—which makes her detachment so wonderful—she herself was involved in it all, do you see! I don’t mean that she—that she feels exactly the way I do. She wouldn’t. She isn’t like that, anyway. She’s too—unphysical. But ourfriendship means everything to her, all the same. She says that passionate friendship is actually more involving than passionate love. Because it absorbs and colors the imagination, you see. If we were lovers, she says—as the world understands the phrase, you know—why, we mightn’t mean nearly so much to each other as we do with things as they are with us. But she was ready to sacrifice this passionate friendship for my sake. She was afraid I might suffer too much, if it continued. You mustn’t think I am crazily conceited, Lewis, when I tell you that not seeing me any morewouldhave meant sacrifice to Clare. I don’t understand myself why she cares for me as she does. The miracle of her caring fills me with the deepest humility. But she does care. Our being together so much means everything to her, as it does to me, only in a different way. And she was ready to give it up! She said that, quite aside from the suffering it might bring me, there was always the chance that my caring so much for her might keep me from falling in love with some girl I could marry, do you see. And she talked it all out with me—quietly, bravely. But I wanted to stay, of course,—just so long as I was sure it was not hurting her, or making her unhappy. Do you understand?”
Lewis sighed. Not only Clare herself, but Clare even heard about, invariably overwhelmed Lewis with the greatest ennui—or in happier moments made him swearing, cursing mad. Just now it was ennui. But he tried to conceal his weariness for Dick’s sake. Dick was not only Cynthia’s husband’s cousin. He was Lewis’friend of many years. He had no brains—certainly—but artistic functioning in his brainpan somewhere took the place of brains, and most whiles made him companionable enough. So now, after sighing, Lewis said, “Yes, I understand perfectly. But Clare is obviously right: clearsighted, as you yourself must see. The friendship is destructive to you while it leaves her unhurt. You ought to snap out of it. It’s no joke, I know, being head over heels in love with a married woman. But it does happen. And it’s never any good sticking around and trying to get nourishment on half a loaf. A clean break is the only self-respecting possibility. Sorry—but you asked for it, old-timer.”
A silence, charged with emotion (another of Dick’s substitutes for brain) moving toward articulation followed. Then he blurted, “I can’t do it, Lewis. One can’t choose to starve. Half a loaf is better than none—even if it isn’t filling!”
Lewis’ response to that was unequivocal. “It is not better. It’s just a sweet little hell. Clare gave you the right dope. Take it from her, if you won’t from me. If you want to salvage your future, stay a long way away from Green Doors, and snap out of it.”
“You talk as if you knew....” Dick was looking at his friend now with as much curiosity as surprise. “But Clare has stopped saying anything about my going. She put it up to me to decide for myself, anyway. She wasn’t dogmatic and opinionated. Not for a minute! I decided to stay. It’s notthatI want your opinion on. I believe, withClare, in the individual’s right to decide on the happiness or the misery he will take for himself.... So I’m staying,—but, thanks to Clare, with my eyes open. It hasn’t been easy. It is just about what you say—a sweet little hell.”
“Well, of course.... So that’s that. Shall we get going?” Lewis picked up his stick and crushed a half-smoked cigarette under his heel.
“No, wait a minute. See here, Lewis, I want to talk to you. I can’t talk, walking. It was Clare, really, who sent me off down here with you. And I haven’t come to the point of what she wanted me to tell you yet. That was only preliminary. Clare has a scheme.—She thought you’d agree that it was, perhaps, rather a good one.”
Lewis groaned but selected another cigarette. Another “scheme”—“good.” Clare was indomitable. He leaned back again, his elbows on the rock. They might as well have the rest of it now, he supposed, so long as they were messing about in thick fog, anyway. A little more or less confusion from poor Dick’s mindlessness—what did it matter! But the next minute Lewis was galvanized into feeling that it mattered enormously. For Dick had said, “I didn’t go away, you see. And I’m not going to. I couldn’t leave Clare, to save my life. Our friendship (Clare’s and mine) has become of such importance to us both—yes, Clare too—that now we see that nothing in this world could have the power to part us. Least of all, mere physical separation. We must stay—passionate friends. We belong to each other. I don’t think youcan imagine, Lewis, what such friendship can be—or what trying to stamp it out of one’s life would do to one. It would be infinitely easier to stamp out a sexual relationship than such a one as Clare’s and mine.... Well, this is her scheme. She thinks it will make it possible for our friendship to go on being beautiful, even grow more beautiful, more dynamic. She wants me to marry Petra. That will make it safer for us both, do you see? What’s the matter?”
The obvious matter was that Lewis had torn his coat sleeve, a jagged rent, somehow on the rock.
“Mrs. Langley will mend it for you. She can do a magnificent mend. But how’d you manage it? You were just leaning—”
“Yes, just leaning, and hearing the ravings of a blasted idiot. What are you trying to do? Be funny, I suppose! But I don’t care for that kind of funniness. You can leave Petra out of it.”
Dick was amazed but not silenced by Lewis’ violence. “I felt surprised myself at first,” he owned. “But it isn’t so wild as you seem to think. And not a bit idiotic. I like Petra. I like her a lot. I didn’t used to. It’s only lately I’ve begun to understand her. She’s—why, she’s a stunning girl, really. And she isn’t in love with anybody else, that I know of. She’s not engaged to that McCloud person, in spite of Clare thinking for a while that she might be and was keeping it secret, the way she likes keeping things secret. But now Petra has told me herself she isn’t. And I’ve got Saint Paul with me: It’s better tomarry than to burn.... There’s the whole Greek idea, too. Those Greek fellows, of course, weren’t faithful to their wives in the sense that I shall be faithful to Petra. But the situation was rather parallel, all the same. They had their intellectual and spiritual friendships with men or with women not their wives—and it succeeded. It was wise and sane. Clare thought you would be sympathetic—understand—”
“Look here, Dick! Prick me and wake me up. This isn’t real. If it is, if I’m awake, then somebody’d better advise Farwell to get in a good psychiatrist—but not me, thanks. I’m out of it. But Clare should be under observation. You too. You both had better leave Petra alone. Not that anything either of you could say or do will even so much as touch her wholesomeness! I’m a fool to get so excited about it. What do you say—shall we go back to the car and start for Boston—or shall we stick this out till the fog lifts? I’m perfectly ready to go back.”